What Is IWY? iShares Russell Top 200 Growth ETF

Approximate weights as of October 2026; refresh quarterly from iShares's fund page. Each ticker links to its individual stock guide in Walnut.

Read the top ten as printed and you see ten positions, the largest of which is NVIDIA at 15.5 percent as of October 2026. Read it as companies and the picture changes. Alphabet appears twice, as Class A at 5.9 percent and Class C at 4.8 percent, because the two share classes are separate index constituents even though they are claims on the same business. Combined, Alphabet is 10.7 percent, comfortably the second largest exposure in the fund and larger than Apple at 7.9 percent.

That leaves nine companies holding roughly 60.8 percent of assets. NVIDIA at 15.5 and Alphabet at 10.7 are more than a quarter of the fund between them. Add Apple at 7.9, Microsoft at 6.0, Broadcom at 5.2, Meta at 4.4, Micron at 4.1, Tesla at 3.6 and AMD at 3.5, and the remainder of the portfolio, whatever its length, is fighting for the other 39 percent. AMD replaced Eli Lilly in the top ten between August and October 2026, which pushed the fund further toward chips.

This is a property of the universe, not a mistake. The Russell Top 200 is the mega cap segment, and applying a growth filter to a list of 200 companies leaves a short list of very large ones. Anyone comparing IWY to a Russell 1000 Growth fund is comparing a fund built from 200 candidates to one built from 1,000, and the concentration gap follows directly from that.

Memory chips are the textbook cyclical business. Pricing collapses when supply catches demand and recovers when it does not, and the earnings line moves accordingly. Micron nonetheless sits at 4.1 percent of a growth index as of October 2026, larger than Tesla and larger than AMD. That is not an error in the screen. It is the screen working as designed.

Growth indices classify companies on measures such as recent sales growth and forecast earnings growth, both of which are backward or near-term looking. A cyclical company at the top of its cycle scores as a growth company on that arithmetic, and gets weighted accordingly. The same mechanism has put steel producers, homebuilders and energy names into growth indices at various points, and it will keep doing so as long as the classification runs on trailing fundamentals.

The practical consequence is that a growth index does not consistently mean durable compounders. It means whatever currently screens as fast growing, which shifts with the cycle. That is neither good nor bad, but it does mean the label carries less information about business quality than most people assume when they buy a growth fund.

IWY suits someone who deliberately wants the mega cap growth end of the US market and understands that this is a concentrated position, not a diversified one. Technology at 58 percent and communication services at 17 percent means three quarters of the fund sits in two sectors. Healthcare is 5 percent. There is no meaningful energy, staples, utilities or real estate exposure to offset a technology drawdown.

It is the wrong tool as a core US holding. A total market or S&P 500 fund carries the same companies at lower weights alongside everything else, at a lower fee. Someone already holding a broad index fund and adding IWY should understand that they are doubling up on the same handful of names rather than adding anything new, since those companies are already the largest positions in the broad fund.

The 0.33 percent trailing yield reflects a portfolio of companies that mostly reinvest rather than distribute. Anyone whose objective involves income will find nothing here. The 0.20 percent fee is reasonable for a specialised style index but sits above the cheapest broad market options, which matters more the longer the holding period. Concentration also cuts both ways on returns: as of 2026-10-16 IWY's share price was up 4.9 percent for the year to date and 6.6 percent over one year, while its 3-year average return, per Yahoo, was 23.3 percent.

There are three common ways to get IWY exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) of IWY directly at any major broker that lists it. Hold it as a core position and layer more concentrated ideas on top. Or build it into a thematic portfolio in Walnut, so IWY sits alongside other holdings that express the same thesis, with target weights you can rebalance toward. IWY trades like a stock during market hours, so you buy it the same way you would any listed share.

New to buying funds? See how to buy an ETF, step by step.

Whether IWY is a good buy depends less on any single call and more on your time horizon and what you already hold: it tracks the Russell Top 200 Growth Index, so the real question is whether you want that exposure in your mix and at what weight. We walk through valuation, concentration, and what would have to be true for it to outperform from here in is IWY a buy?

IWY gives you the Russell Top 200 Growth Index exposure in one ticker at a 0.20% expense ratio. Most investors use it as a core holding and layer more concentrated thematic portfolios on top.

Whether IWY is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, concentration, and what would have to be true for it to outperform from here in is IWY a buy?

IWY yields 0.33% as of October 2026, paid by passing through the dividends of its underlying holdings. For the payout schedule, history, and how the distributions are taxed, see IWY dividend: yield and schedule.

For what analysts expect from the companies IWY holds, its yield as a guide to income, and why no one publishes a price target for the fund itself, see the IWY forecast.

New to funds like IWY? Start with what an ETF is, then how to buy an ETF, or browse the full guide to ETF investing.